Why gay men don’t need feminism – Part 2: The takeover

‘Why Gay Men Don’t Need Feminism’ is a four-part series of articles adapted from a speech that was intended to be presented at the Second International Conference on Men’s Issues in 2015 by the author, Matthew Lye (a.k.a. Andy Bob). The four parts are:

As these articles are written from the perspective of a Men’s Human Rights Activist (MHRA), they focus on the dysfunctional relationship between feminism and gay men. Feminism has had an entirely different relationship with lesbians which is irrelevant to this topic, and has been examined in detail elsewhere.

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Once upon a time, there was an emerging affiliation of hetero-abnormative persons known as GLBT that was just starting to gain some influence in the playground of gender politics. Unfortunately, L had long been overrun by a surly cabal of mean-girl bullies known as feminists. Betty Friedan, getting it right for once, referred to these lesbian feminists as ‘The Lavender Menace’ and tried to warn anyone who would listen, especially heterosexual feminists, that this gang was bad news. [1] When a querulous rat-bag like Betty Friedan warns against fraternizing with a group of women on the basis that they don’t work well with others, you just know that it would be ill-advised to give them anything other than an extremely wide berth.

Perhaps if G had paid closer attention to this warning, it may have been better prepared to handle the moment when L told G to check its privilege and remove its limp-wristed self from the front of the queue – L didn’t particularly care where G went, so long as it didn’t stray too far away from its monitoring glare. For reasons that some people, especially many gay men, struggle to understand, G meekly obeyed, and allowed itself to be relegated to second-class status within its own movement – a position which it retains to this very day.

When GLBT became LGBT, there was no longer any doubt that feminists had commandeered the Rainbow Float, and G – along with B, T and eventually, I, P, both Qs and even a confused-looking question mark that didn’t seem to know why it was there – quickly learned that it was expected to do as it was told. [2] Worse still, L managed to convince this ragtag gaggle of the orientationally-aggrieved that they all owed something to its dominant ideology: feminism.

Gay men have even been publicly rebuked by straight, feminist celebrities, like Patricia Arquette and Rose McGowan, for being insufficiently grateful to feminism. In what one can only assume was some kind of post-Oscar daze, Arquette declared that it “was time for all… the gay people and people of color that we’ve all fought for to fight for us now.” [3] One less than grateful gay media pundit of colour responded with: “Dear Patricia Arquette: Blacks and gays owe white women nothing”, [4] and proceeded to call her a “fool”.

Carol Hanisch: “[G]ay liberation carries contempt for women to the ultimate: total segregation.”

Wrong. Arquette is not a fool. She is just a feminist who couldn’t resist exploiting an internationally-televised event to regurgitate Feminist Sacred Babble about wage gaps, the oppression of white women, the plight of Third World women who, according to feminists, are the only people in Third World regions who suffer human rights abuses and deprivation – apparently, the men and children are doing just great – and peevish lamentations about the ingratitude of minorities upon whom feminists claim to have lavished decades of love and support.

Spreading lies and misinformation at every opportunity is what feminists do, and Arquette is a feminist. The only surprise is that she didn’t conclude her speech by making a plaintive cry about where all the good men had gone. Perhaps she’s saving it for when she hands out the Best Supporting Actor award at the 2016 Oscars. No doubt, the talented-but-feminist Meryl Streep will be there to offer an embarrassment of inappropriately shrill support.

Rose McGowan attempted to rally support for feminism among gay men by opting for the infinitely more bizarre approach of hurling a barrage of all-too-familiar Code Black Shaming Language [5] at them: “Gay men are as misogynistic as straight men, if not more so,” she said. “I have an indictment of the gay community right now, I’m actually really upset with them.” With this one statement, McGowan reminded gay men that the accusation that they are ‘as bad as straight men’ – the most scathing insult in the entire feminist arsenal – is a fundamental tenet of feminist ideology. [6] Gay men are no better than straight men. Got it?

Rose McGowan: Gay men are just “people who have basically fought for the right to stand on top of a float wearing an orange speedo and take molly [MDMA].”

McGowan even threw in a comment about gay men being “delusional idiots” just in case her charge of misogyny wasn’t enough to inspire gay men to rally around the feminist cause. Perhaps the most alarming of all was McGowan’s claim that she has been a long-time supporter of gay men and their rights, thus offering an insight into the rather curious approach that feminists tend to adopt toward their supposed allies.

Predictably, the mainstream media defended McGowan by suggesting that she was only being criticized for her comments because she was a woman: “As a woman and a Hollywood actress, McGowan is seen as fair game for scrutiny.” [7] Fortunately, this wheezy old feminist meme is not working as effectively as it used to, and many gay men indignantly dismissed it with the contempt it deserves. Some even took the opportunity to give feminism itself a dressing down in a manner which must have alarmed those who were hoping that McGowan’s comments would succeed in whipping gay men back into line. One gay man observed that it was:

.. not inaccurate to say that McGowan is using guilt and illogical appeals to our emotions in an attempt to chain gay men directly to our oppressors. Was that hyperbolic? Not in any way that even compares to what McGowan has said. Feminists are big on a story of oppression always being valid if someone feels oppressed, right? Well, I feel strongly that feminism has been oppressive to gay men, to all other men, to anyone with any masculine traits, and, in many ways, even to women (sometimes especially to women). Casual and accepted deference to feminism no longer works for me, and it shouldn’t work for McGowan.” [8]

A note to Rose McGowan: being informed by an alleged celebrity that, quite frankly, most gay men like me had never heard of, that she is “really upset” about our lack of enthusiasm for her bigoted, anti-male ideology that regards gay men as, at best, token lackeys who ought to be ashamed of our misogynistic ‘rejection’ of women, is not something that will interrupt my sleep any time soon. The fact that she assumes that it will, speaks more to her narcissism, her staggering sense of entitlement and the supremacist leanings of her chosen ideology than it does about the gay men she has publicly, and rather ironically, condemned as “delusional”.

Public attacks like these have the benefit of alerting many gay men to the fact that feminism is one belligerent, foot-stomping Diva they would be well-advised to step as far away from as possible, and proceed to expose her true nature to the world at large. Feminism will just have to find some other BFF to fetch its morning lattes, because all except the most self-loathing gay man would choose to continue being its compliant doormat. Another more important benefit of such attacks is that they leave many gay men somewhat bewildered as to what exactly feminism has done for them. This is a rather important detail which feminists like McGowan and Arquette always leave suspiciously vague, if indeed, they ever get around to expanding on it at all.

From Everyday Feminism:“The gay rights movement has won rights and recognition that largely serve the interests of white, wealthy cisgender gay men to the detriment of poor queers and queer people of color, and to the detriment of racial and economic justice more generally.”

Like many gay men, the only thing I can discern that feminism has ever done for me is to commandeer my own human rights movement under the guise of a purported alliance, and using it as a vehicle to promote an anti-male hate movement hell-bent on undermining the rights and welfare of men and boys – a demographic that includes me – attempting to rope me into helping it to demonize my own masculine identity and, if that weren’t enough, brainwashing the more suggestible of my gay brethren into accusing our straight brothers of being responsible for every problem and injustice the world has ever known.

By allowing themselves to be so publicly allied to such a blatantly corrupt and destructive ideology as feminism, the gay men of LGBT have sold themselves out. They have betrayed whatever egalitarian principles they may have once had by participating in organized feminism’s relentless campaign to demonize, demoralize and criminalize straight men – especially those of the white, cis-gendered variety – in what has become a concerted global ritual of perpetual condemnation.

Call me a purist, but that is not something in which any credible human rights activist, organization or movement should be participating.

It is little wonder that as early as 1976, renowned gay rights activist, John Lauritson, was already lamenting the fact that feminists had bullied their way into the gay rights movement, effectively marginalizing the gay men within it, and turning the gay rights movement into what he called “the fag end of feminism.” [9] John Lauriston ought to know because he was there when it happened. As a primary source for this phenomenon, it is imperative that his experiences and observations be presented in detail. Here is an excerpt from a speech he gave at the 4th Gay Academic Union Conference in the city of New York back in 1976:

I remember a number of such [disruptions] in the early days of the Gay Liberation Front, in the fall of 1969. Women we had never seen before would come in and deliver tirades against the GLF men; they would say that not only were gay men more sexist or more male chauvinist than straight men, but men in GLF were among the worst of all. These charges were unfair and untrue [and] had a certain demoralizing effect. Some of the men felt that rather than acting against our oppressors… we should turn our attention inward to confront the enemy which was: Ourselves!”

At the first gay conference at Rutgers in 1970, the major panel on the last day was disrupted by a group of women who demanded that all proceedings come to a halt. They charged that the panel was “elitist” and “sexist” (although half of the panelists were women); their main ostensible grievance was that on a table in the hall, provided for leaflets and free literature, were copies of Gay newspaper, in which they had found a reproduction of a beautiful, lush, reclining female nude, painted in the style of classic romanticism. This, they charged, was designed to titillate men, and was degrading to women. Overlooked was the fact that the picture illustrated an article written by a lesbian.

The conference organizers were cruelly attacked, apparently for the sin of not having policed and censored the free literature table. It was a senseless, abusive, and thuggish disruption. For the most specious of reasons, a beautiful and mellow gay conference – one of the very first – had been turned into a nightmare.

One could go on and on. I imagine most of the people in this room [at the 4th Gay Academic Union Conference] have witnessed or read accounts of similar disruptions. There was the first international gay liberation conference in Edinburgh, where women discovered evidence of “sexism” and demanded that the conference change its focus from legislative reform to “confronting sexism”.

Laws, they argued, only affected men, and therefore it was sexist to concentrate upon things like repealing sodomy statutes. A majority of the men went along with this demand, and that was the end of an internationally coordinated campaign to change the laws. It’s amazing it should be considered trivial that after two millennia, homosexual men are still criminals.

A certain pattern emerges. The people in power do not like movements for social change. When such movements are in their infancy, they will try to destroy or divert them. When movements have grown large and viable, then they will try to render them innocuous through co-optation.” [9]

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Co-opting movements after they have already been set-up, organized and funded by others is a well-established feminist strategy. Feminists are parasites who are notorious for appropriating other people’s issues and resources. [10] Neither are they shy about intimidating, labeling, censoring and threatening those who dare to object to their methods, their motives or the gaping logical, factual, ethical and moral flaws in their ideology. [11]

Lauritson’s experiences will have a painfully familiar ring to the legendary domestic violence activist and researcher, Erin Pizzey, Editor at Large at A Voice for Men, because that is exactly what radical lesbian feminists did to the battered women’s shelter movement that she established in Great Britain in 1971. This is how Erin Pizzey remembers the co-optation of the movement that she pioneered:

I went to work in the Women’s Liberation Work Shop in Newport Street, off Shaftesbury Avenue. I also attended the first women’s conferences and I was struck by the hundreds and hundreds of women claiming to be radical militant lesbians. The first women’s conferences were destroyed by violent fisticuffs between these women and most of us were very afraid of them. As far as I was concerned these women did not speak for my gay friends any more than the radical feminists spoke for all women in our country who were very happy at home with their husbands and their children.

In reality, this was a very minor group of women who were only able to hurl abuse at heterosexual women and their families because they were white, middle class and had media jobs. Before very long they were employing each other and ‘marginalizing’ the men who tried to work alongside them. Men, intimidated by their brutal, violent behavior, moved on and out of many jobs. According to these women all women were victims of men’s violent behavior, any attempt for men to fight back met with behind-scenes maneuvering and men LET IT HAPPEN.” [12]

In fact, Ms Pizzey’s evidence-based research was identified as such a threat to derailing what was to become one of feminism’s most lucrative gravy trains – the Domestic Violence Industry – that they targeted her with terrorist threats that forced her to flee to The United States, and ensured that her findings could not be published in her own country for nearly a quarter of a century. [13] It deserves to be noted that, unlike gay men and her fellow domestic violence activists, Erin Pizzey fought back, and continues to do so well into her seventies – as a celebrated Men’s Human Rights Activist.

Video game enthusiasts also fought back against an attempted ideological takeover by feminists, like Anita Sarkeesian, who aimed to impose strict feminist-approved standards and censorship upon their entire industry. [14] The only perceivable interest Sarkeesian seems to have ever had in video games are the opportunities they have provided for her to score the feminist trifecta of damseling for dollars, creating false threat narratives and supervising other people’s pastimes.

This may explain why, despite failing to vanquish her Gamergate opponents, she still manages to look perpetually pleased with herself. Sarkeesian re-affirmed to feminists everywhere that posturing as perpetual victims continues to be extremely rewarding, even when they are openly denounced as a bunch of deceitful and avaricious busybodies. [15] Gamergate has inspired many by demonstrating that it is possible to unite in opposition to feminists who seek to impose their virulently crude and joyless ideology upon all aspects of life, even those as innocuous as personal hobbies.

It was a rude awakening for many feminists. Sadly, it wasn’t rude enough to dissuade them from punishing the dissenting perspectives of The Honey Badgers, who dared to display a Gamergate poster in their booth at the 2015 Comic Expo in Calgary. [16]. The Honey Badgers included the graphic animation designer and prominent MHRA, Alison Tieman (a.k.a. Typhon Blue), and the celebrated anti-feminist videographer Karen Straughan (a.k.a. GirlWritesWhat).

Their ousting from the Comic Expo was, essentially, an intentionally brutal assault on Alison Tieman for daring to exercise her independent intellect and freedom of speech rights by expressing her well-supported rationale for rejecting feminism and its methods, despite being granted permission from the feminists in charge to do so. The lack of scruples displayed by the feminists in their treatment of Ms. Tieman and her associates only highlighted the validity of her position – and revealed that feminists could only respond to it by giving vent to their notoriously totalitarian instincts. The integrity of The Honey Badgers has also been an inspiration for many people hitherto fearful of incurring feminist displeasure.

It is interesting to note that Lauritson believes that one of the main reasons why feminists got away with co-opting the gay rights movement all those years ago, and have enjoyed virtual immunity from criticism for doing so, is because – like Erin Pizzey and her associates – most of the gay men were afraid of them. [9] In their defense, most men are afraid of feminists, and for good reason. Feminists routinely accuse men of misogyny for the most facile of reasons. These can include any alleged transgression from wearing a colourful shirt [17], pointing out the many positive attributes of men and masculinity [18], or simply organizing, supporting and participating in international conferences addressing men’s issues. [19]

These accusations can destroy lives and careers, as Larry Summers discovered when he was forced to step down as president of Harvard University in 2005 for challenging feminist dogma by suggesting that men and women had innate differences. [20] “I just couldn’t breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill,” said strong, independent professor, Dr. Nancy Hopkins through her oxygen mask as she lay prostrate on what must be her very heavily-utilized fainting couch. “Let’s not forget that people used to say that women couldn’t drive an automobile,” she added for no discernible reason. Feminist accusations of misogyny don’t have to actually make any sense to achieve their desired results – they just have to be made.

Feminists like to make examples of men like Larry Summers to serve as warnings to other men, and sometimes other women [16], simply because they can. It is an expression of tyrannical triumphalism of a powerful and well-connected political orthodoxy with the soul of an over-indulged child with a taste for retribution. Summers’ fate was sealed when Hopkins stated that she found his comments “deeply concerning.” [21] This is popular code-speak deployed by feminists to describe the thoughts and actions of any non-compliant person whom feminists would publicly hang from a butcher’s hook if they thought they could possibly get away with it, which, metaphorically-speaking, is exactly what feminists did to Larry Summers.

For gay men, the most damaging result of the feminist takeover of the gay rights movement was the imposition of feminist theory onto how gay men should perceive and define themselves. It seems almost custom-designed to instill self-loathing and guilt. [22] In a nutshell, it is built on one achingly familiar reductionist feminist maxim: Lesbians Good, Gay Men Bad – very bad. I told you it was familiar. No-one has ever explained this fundamental feminist maxim with more damning eloquence than John Lauritson:

According to this [feminist] ideology, lesbians are doubly oppressed – both as homosexuals and as women – where homosexual males are merely singly oppressed. Gay men still enjoy a “male privilege” because, according to a central dictum of radical feminism: ALL MEN BENEFIT FROM THE OPPRESSION OF ALL WOMEN. So it would seem that gay men are not really so badly off, and perhaps it would be better if they did not devote their energies to repealing sodomy statutes and fighting discrimination, because these goals if realized would simply give them equality with straight men, thus objectively increasing the oppression of women. Instead, gay men should spend their time “dealing with sexism”, which they acquired from having been born male and in learning how to “give up their male privilege”.

According to this ideology, the best thing that gay men can so is act as [the] “men’s auxiliary” for women’s liberation, taking their cues from feminists. And since men are the enemy, gay men should be willing to enlist as agents in the fight against males and against maleness.” [9]

These are prophetic words indeed, especially in light of how the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE) was treated by Gay Pride Toronto. [23] The feminists who obviously control this LGBT organization revoked CAFE’s permission to march in the 2014 Toronto Pride parade the moment they got wind of the fact that CAFE is an organization focused on offering support to men in crisis.

Pride Toronto, an organization whose concerns supposedly include the rights and welfare of men who happen to be gay, bisexual and transgender, stood by silently and allowed feminists to do it. As gay men are no less likely to require support in times of crisis, there can be no more glaring evidence of feminists bullying gay men into acting against their own interests than this.

The gay men of Pride Toronto fell into lock-step formation behind the man-hating feminist bigots who obviously call the shots within their organization. Spinelessly acquiescing to feminist demands is nothing to be proud of, and exposes whatever claims its members like to make about standing for tolerance and equality as nothing more than a pretentious sham.

The fact that the organizers used CAFE’s alleged but nonexistant affiliation with A Voice for Men – which they labeled as misogynistic on the grounds that it focuses on the rights and welfare of men and boys who are, get out the holy water, straight [24] – as their rationale for banning CAFE for all eternity from marching in their parade should have been shocking. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

As Lauritson chillingly predicted, feminists did indeed “enlist gay men as agents in the fight against males and maleness” – especially straight males. None of this has anything to do with gay rights, but everything to do with fulfilling feminist agendas which they have never been shy about expressing and promoting. It is always an added bonus for feminists if they can create division between men of different sexual orientations by manipulating us into adversarial positions and pitting us against each other. It works to everyone’s advantage but our own.

One of the greatest threats to feminism is tolerance and understanding among men. It is even more of a perceived danger than tolerance and understanding between men and women. One of the reasons for feminists’ rabidly negative response to A Voice for Men is that it provides opportunities for men to explore their shared experiences as men, creating a cohesive unity of purpose and mutual respect that feminists have always actively sought to undermine.

As Lauritson observed nearly forty years ago, feminists do not want gay men to achieve equality with straight men. Feminists prefer gay men, like women, to perceive themselves as perpetual victims, and to cast straight men as the villains who are responsible for everything they hate about their lives and the world they in which they live. Feminists even constructed an entire field of study called Queer Theory in order to provide gay men with their very own binary model of systemic oppression. Straight men get to be the bad guys all over again, only they are referred to as the ‘Institution of Hetero-normativity’ (no, really) rather than ‘the Patriarchy’. There is no need to go too deeply into Queer Theory here – it’s just feminism in a thong, only loopier. [22]

Perhaps the real purpose of creating Queer Theory was to divert the attention of gay men away from feminist rhetoric in the hope that they wouldn’t notice the staggering homophobia of feminism’s most prominent and influential theorists. When gay men identify as feminists, you can be certain that they have never read much feminist theory, because if they had, they would never embrace an ideology that relentlessly denigrates them in a manner that would make a placard-wielding Westboro Baptist homophobe cringe. [25]

The feminist take on gay men ranks as among the most offensive, deranged and spectacularly stupid of all feminist theories. The most important take-away for gay men who read it is that there is no counter-theory from prominent feminists that refutes any of the relentlessly hateful drivel that has been offered by the vanguards of feminism over the past five decades – and it is much too late to for them to attempt to do so now. They cannot hide it, deny it or justify why none of them have ever even tried to defend the gay men at whom they feel entitled to wag censorious fingers for failing to be sufficiently dutiful allies.

In Part 3 of Why Gay Men Don’t Need Feminism, we shall examine what prominent and influential feminists really think about gay men. Suffice to say that it is not very complimentary, or a particularly big secret – except perhaps to the gay men of Gay Pride Toronto, who may want to rethink allowing feminists to continue poisoning their ranks, providing, of course, that they ever get around to reading it. Part 3 is appropriately entitled, Gay Bashing.